Musicians + Sports: Rascal Flatts Counting Days Until Football Season Returns

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“I’m going to be honest,” admitted Jay DeMarcus. “I hate February and March.”

Rascal Flatts‘ bass player is of course referring to the time between the Super Bowl, and the opening day of the Major League Baseball season. “Those two months are just bleak and there’s a bunch of nothingness,” he lamented in terms of sports.

“I mean, I like basketball,” added frontman Gary LeVox. “But when you’re coming off the rush of the Super Bowl and everything else…”

“But we have the Nashville Predators, and they haven’t done so well,” LeVox said of the professional hockey franchise of the band’s adopted home base in Tennessee. LeVox and Demarcus are both natives of Columbus, Ohio, while Rooney hails from the state of Kansas. “So again, we’re a little salty during February and March.”

The guys–whose ninth studio album, Rewind, is out May 13–go on to declare their collegiate alliances, discuss what song they’d use as walk-on music if they played baseball (“What does Kenny Powers come out to?” quipped Rooney, referencing the lead character of HBO’s Eastbound & Down series) and discuss which band member is the best golfer of the three.

They even dish on which major country artist is actually a world-class curler, as in the Olympic sport that involves “stones” and brooms.